Bishop Hill Uncertainty? It's old hat
Dec 15, 2010 Climate: Statistics Climate: Surface In the wake of Climategate there were many earnest expressions of concern about the way that uncertainties had been downplayed by many climate scientists. Even some of the people most associated with the CAGW cause were heard to repeat these statements of regret.
Remember that?
Apparently, it doesn't apply any more.
There has been a bit of a kerfuffle (well, quite a lot of a kerfuffle actually) among the same kind of people over a report that a Fox News editor had told his staff to make sure that viewers were told that any claims about temperature trends were based on disputed data. His email apparently found its way into the public arena.
"[We should] refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question."
To me though, this looks rather commendable. The data (and indeed the adjustments applied to it) are hotly disputed, so what the viewers were being told was undoubtedly true. And Fox's actions seem admirably even-handed too, with journalists told that statements about both warming and cooling should carry this same caveat.
So why then have all the usual suspects suddenly gone into overdrive as if heresy had been committed?
To me it seems that Fox News are being crucified for failing to make clear statements of faith. And despite all the repentance expressed by the sinners of the past, it appears that no lessons have actually been learned.
Postscript: Tom Nelson notes that Revkin, who has been enjoying Fox's discomfiture, seems to have changed his position on writing about "illegally acquired" material...again.
Postscript 2: This is the Guardian's take on the affair. They seem to have some different threads to the story that are not supported by the email as published at Media Matters - I can see nothing in it to support their position that "Bill Sammon, imposed an order to make time for climate sceptics within 15 minutes of the airing of a story about a scientific report showing that 2000-2009 was on track to be the hottest decade on record."
Reader Comments (66)
I agree with David Bailey re Fox News. As a Brit I admit I only see it when Jon Stewart is mercillesly taking the p*ss out of it, but to me it is mostly a wild far-right network - Glenn Beck anyone???
However, this memo is perfectly reasonable and fair in light of the current ongoing debate.
Sadly, my beloved BBC still acts as if Al Gore's word was gospel and climategate never happened. Even, (much admired in this household), grand old man David Attenborough seems to have bought the cagw meme. Even Channel 4 news, often a bastion of sobriety in these matters, interviews the Environment secretary in Cancun without ever wavering from the premise that cagw is real, and the whole issue is about what political action can be delivered.
The newspaper I buy most often, The Grauniad, has simply had an editorial psychotic episode in its environment dept, alas ongoing! George seems to veer these days between some strange hybrid of Blanche Dubois and Oswald Mosely. What is an old fashioned moderate leftie like myself (prosperity and decent living/working conditions for all, brothers! :-) ) to do when one's fondly admired media institutions seem to be in chronic denial?
Never mind, I'll get me donkey jacket...
Zed
The 'stuff about geese' you doubt above is in fact correct and the reference you need is this:
Hope this helps
Dominic
And no, the same authors don't think that this spells the end for the snow geese either:
Which is of course a relief.
Jiminy Cricket
The Independent article says a second generation Grizzly-Polar bear hybrid has been found which, if true, implies that first generation hybrids are fertile and the two populations are not reproductively isolated. In which case, according to Ernst Mayr’s definition of a species, Grizzly and Polar bears are merely varieties within a single species. (The Biologists’ great trade secret is that they can’t agree on a definition of species but Mayr’s is probably the most useful.)
Once all this dawns on the conservationists they will probably yell “Genetic Pollution!” and demand that Grizzlies north of the Arctic Circle are shot on sight, if the RSPB’s attitude to Ruddy Ducks is anything to go by.
I have to admit I don't get too worried about the bears. They evolved about 150kya and survived the Eemian interglacial 125kya when it was rather warmer than the present and sea levels were >4m higher (from memory; please be tolerant).
This sea level highstand is generally regarded as evidence for total/near total loss of the Arctic ice cap.
So, if they came through that, they are presumably capable of surviving something similar again.
Government Grant Opportunity
Market conditions now require condoms suitable for use by grizzly bears. Both the product, and all packaging must be suitable for the end user
Worrying about temperature curves is similarly distracting. Is it not now clear that the 'traditional' alarmist approach to directing political policy has failed?
I think you are in danger of getting left behind. The debate is now about adaptation, not mitigation. Which, when you take a long, cold look at it, was always inevitable.
Too many fantasists at the table.
Sorry - my comments above were primarily directed at Zed. I should have made this clear.
Not having any themselves, Media Matters was duly shocked to discover that journalistic standards existed and further that someone had the temerity to actually write them down and then disseminate via some new-fangled electronic medium.
Boehlert's mind must be truly blown.
Bears and whales mating? Bears and seals? Whales and seals? Will they go to Relate when their unions are "far from happy"?
Where's Josh when you need him?
Re Shub
In Norfolk, interspecies mating has always been a problem. Not sure if that explains CRU though. But from pizzles to pizzlys and the hype around their cross-breeding. Alarmist rags report that as a new CAGW threat when in reality it's just boring old evolution. If it's a successful hybrid, it'll perhaps become more dominant, otherwise it just increases biodiversity. Or, seeing as the pizzlys seem to inherit polar bear traits, a white/brown artic woodland camo bear that's very proficient at stalking could make life interesting for hunters, hikers and border patrols.
There's been similar reaction with the lack of Arctic death spiral story. Pro-CAGW focus on the polar bears, not the announcement that there's no scientific evidence for any death spiral or tipping point.
AnyColourYouLike : You aren't alone in being depressed about the BBC and The Guardian. Of course I always knew that The Guardian was going to view the news from its own angle but I used to naively assume that it would at least give us the facts, however unpalatable it or its readers might find them. To find it being relentlessly biased for so long about CAGW has been very disillusioning.
Fox readers are misinformed according to the Toronto Star… (Known to many Canadians as The Red Star…
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http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/908391–watching-fox-news-leaves-viewers-less-informed-study-finds
From George Monbiot in the Guardian 14th Feb 2005 -
"Winter is no longer the great grey longing of my childhood. The freezes this country suffered in 1982 and 1963 are - unless the Gulf Stream stops - unlikely to recur. Our summers will be long and warm."
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/02/15/mocking-our-dreams/
h/t Greenie Watch
It is almost superfluous to note that Fox News has been telling lies and rabble-rousing on the subject of Global Heating for decades now and is one of the chief rat-nests of the denial industry.
Far from being 'fair and balanced' they give voice only to the most extreme reaction and invite persons of other persuasions on only to abuse them and shout them down.
We have hear, now evidence that this was no accident.
Of course their pretext is this is that Global Heating is still under dispute.
This is misleading in the extreme. Global Heating is accepted by 97% of the world's Climate Scientists and every single national Academy of Science.
All the noise is being made by the remaining three percent, many of them extremely suspect individuals with extremely suspect connections on the Right, and the only reason they have any influence at all is because of an elaborate and expensive disinformation campaign financed by Exon-Mobil and a rogue's gallery of other self-interested corporations and co-ordinated by the same people who assured you that smoking is harmless--the Heartland Institute.
Fox News is their major propaganda arm for filling the heads of the conservative ditto-heads with lies and distortions.
And this poor organization, run by one of the richest and most unscrupulous men on the planet, who has probably done more harm to more people than any other corporate overlord in history, is being 'crucified' !
Oh, the bloody tears of conservative victim-hood!
O the sad, sad lives of the ultra-rich and the bullying powerful.
The author of this blog would be better employed inviting us to feel sorry for the people who were made homeless by the Pakistani floods, the thousands who died in the European heatwave of 2003 and millions of people who will follow them into destitution and death as Global Heating accelerates, rivers dry, deserts grow, storms come harder and more frequently, the seas rise and large sections of the earth slowly become uninhabitable.
Shame on Murdoch and shame on you Bishop Hill for defending him.
If he escapes from this life with a whole skin it will be more than he deserves.